WV22

WV22
Burial site of Amenhotep III
Schematic of WV22
WV22
Coordinates	25°44′36″N 32°35′50″E / 25.74333°N 32.59722°E / 25.74333; 32.59722
Location	West Valley of the Kings
Discovered	before 1799
Excavated by	Theodore M. Davis Howard Carter (1915) Waseda University (1989–present)
Decoration	Amduat
← Previous KV21 Next → WV23

Tomb WV22, also known as KV22, was the burial place of Amenhotep III, a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, in the western arm of the Valley of the Kings. The tomb is unique in that it has two subsidiary burial chambers for the pharaoh's wives Tiye and Sitamen (who was also his daughter). It was officially discovered in August 1799 by Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage, engineers with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt but had probably been open for some time. The tomb was first excavated in the early 1900s by Theodore M. Davis; the details of this are lost. The first documented clearance was carried out by Howard Carter in 1915. Since 1989, a Japanese team from Waseda University led by Sakuji Yoshimura and Jiro Kondo has excavated and conserved the tomb. The sarcophagus is missing from the tomb. The tomb's layout and decoration follow the tombs of the king's predecessors, Amenhotep II (KV35) and Thutmose IV (KV43); however, the decoration is much finer in quality. Several images of the pharaoh's head have been cut out and can be seen today in the Louvre.